It should be no surprise that the various highly classified Operation Majestic
12 or Majic-12 or MJ-12 documents have been attacked since their existence was
first made public. Equally unsurprising is the fact that a number of phony or
hoax or fraudulent MJ-12 documents have been released as well. Clearly if the
original documents: The Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) of November 18, 1952;
the Truman-Forrestal Memo (TFM) of Sept. 24, 1947 (page 8 of the EBD); and the
Cutler-Twining Memo (CTM) of July 14, 1954 (found in July, 1985, in Box 189 of
Entry 267 of Record Group 341 at the National Archives by Jaime Shandera and
William Moore) are genuine, then the consequences are enormous. Aliens are
visiting earth; the government has recovered at least one crashed saucer and
several alien bodies; and a very significant group of outstanding American
scientists and military leaders has collected, reviewed, evaluated, and kept
secret all kinds of information about the visitors. Man is NOT alone and the
government has covered up the biggest story of the millennium at least since
1947.

Ten years after the 1984 receipt of a roll of exposed 35mm film by Jaime
Shandera at his Burbank, California home and his efforts with William Moore and
myself to evaluate them, a new roll of film showed up in the mailbox of aviation
and science writer (and longtime ufologist) Don Berliner. This contained many
pages of SOM 1-01: Majestic 12 Group SPECIAL OPERATIONS MANUAL:
"Extraterrestrial Entities and Technology, Recovery and Disposal.” Meanwhile
Tim Cooper, a researcher in Big Bear Lake, California, began receiving loads of
supposedly related MJ-12 documents. There would appear to be no connection
between the original three documents and the SOM 1.01 (Mailed from Wisconsin rather
than Albuquerque, NM) or the mass of Tim Cooper documents which were usually in
the form of Xerox copies, often only legible with difficulty and received by him
by mail or dropped off at his PO Box.

THE DEBUNKERS

There seem to be several distinct groups attacking the documents:

A. There are those who believe (despite all the evidence to the contrary) that
no alien spacecraft have ever visited Earth. Therefore, any documents saying
that they have must be false. No need to do a detailed investigation, to spend
time in Archives, research the people involved, etc. THEY MUST BE FRAUDULENT!!

B. There are those who are convinced that some UFOs are indeed alien spacecraft,
but that no saucer crashed near Roswell because they haven’t found any other
classified documents indicating any have. Karl Pflock in his book (Ref.1)
epitomizes this approach. If no saucer crashed at Roswell, then the documents
must be fake.

C. There are several former military people who are convinced that the documents
must be false because the style, format, details, etc. do not match what they
would have expected them to be based on their military service from the 1960s
onward. This ignores the many changes in office procedures (copy machines, word
processors, etc.) and the fact that the White House is a civilian organization
not a military one.

D. There are a lot of armchair theorists who think they can make judgements
without doing any homework at all.

In much of the discussion one finds the use of the four basic rules for
debunking of any controversial idea:

1. What the public doesn’t know, I won’t tell them.

2. Don’t bother me with the facts, my mind is made up.

3. If one can’t attack the data, attack the people; it is easier.

4. Do one’s research by proclamation; investigation is too much trouble.

Another important rule for some of the attackers is that “Absence of Evidence is
Evidence for Absence.” Karl Pflock and others cite numerous documents, mostly
only classified Secret, that say nothing about Roswell or MAJESTIC 12. This, of
course, neglects the fact that there are still numerous documents from the
Truman and Eisenhower eras 1945-1961 that are still classified, that we rarely
see documents that have classification stamps of TOP SECRET Code Word (TSCW). I was
told in November, 2003, by an archivist at the Ike Library that they still have
about 300,000 pages of classified documents. We know that the NSA classified 156
UFO documents (found in response to a Judge’s directive) as TOP SECRET UMBRA
when they finally released a highly expurgated version (about two lines per page
are not covered with Wite-Out), supposedly because that information is about
sources and methods. Why would it be listed under UFOs if only 5% is about UFOs?

In addition, as a result of my spending a lot of time at twenty different Document
Archives from coast to coast, I can say that almost never does one find TSCW
documents about anything. The best documents for comparison with the EBD would
be the four National Security Briefings for President-Elect Eisenhower presented by

DCI Walter B. Smith in the time period between Ike’s election on November 4,
1952, and January 9, 1953, when Smith informed President Truman of his security
briefings for Ike before and after the election. Unfortunately, despite my FOIA
request to the CIA and a subsequent appeal to their response ("We have nothing
in response to your request” even though I gave the dates and times of two of
the briefings), we have no such documents for comparison.

I won’t try to cover all the existent literature on the documents. There is my
1990 108-page “Final Report On Operation Majestic 12” (Ref. 2) and my 272-page
1996 book “TOP SECRET/MAJIC” (Ref. 3). There are several lengthy papers (Ref. 4-8)
and Kevin Randle’s new book “Case MJ-12” (Ref. 9). There are also numerous
statements on the Internet.

Academics have found it necessary to jump into the fray as well, often without
benefit of any research. For example, Carl Sagan (Ref.10) said “The Air Force
says the documents are bogus. And UFO expert Philip J. Klass and others find
lexicographic inconsistencies that suggest the whole thing is a hoax.” He seemed
to be unaware of the fact that Klass had paid me $1000.00 for providing more than
fourteen documents done in exactly the same Pica typeface as the Cutler-Twining Memo
though Klass, on the basis of nine Elite Typeface documents (obtained by him by
mail, he had never been to the Ike Library) of the 250,000 pages of NSC material
at the Ike Library, had insisted the CTM should have been done in Elite! Some
lexicographic research! Our correspondence and a copy of his check to me are in
Ref. 2.

Dr. Robert Alan Goldberg in the Roswell Chapter of his book “Enemies Within”
(Ref. 11) stated

Evidence of malfeasance was plentiful. Critics noted that the
date format did not conform to governmental style, the papers carried no top
secret registration number, military titles were improperly noted and signatures
appeared to be grafted on to the document. Anachronistic usages like “media” and
"impacted” further betrayed the find.

Goldberg is a Professor of History at the University of Utah. Anybody spending
much time at the Truman and Eisenhower Archives would find many different date
formats in classified, limited distribution, old documents. In Ref. 2 I
published three brief cover memos from CIA Director Allen Dulles to White House
Staff Secretary Colonel Andrew Goodpaster, done within a ten-day period, using
these three date formats: 12 November l956… November 20, 1956… And NOV 22
1956 (Rubber stamp) and even noted one file folder that had seven date formats and
found examples of both Roscoe Hillenkoetter and W.B. Smith (DCIs and MJ-12
members) using the day, month, comma, year format of the EBD. Goldberg didn’t
bother to check the Oxford Dictionary. Both “media” and “impacted” were in use at
the time. I will discuss military titles below.

TOP SECRET CONTROL NUMBERS

The old military guys have persistently attacked the fact that the EBD, the TFM,
and the CTM items all lacked a TOP SECRET CONTROL number. They vociferously
insisted that all TS documents must have a TS control number.

Ed Stewart made a truly strong claim on UFO UPDATES:

For those who might not be
aware, here is something that you will not hear from Stanton T. Friedman, even
though he is well aware of the fact having visited the archives on many times in
his own words. RG 341 is a record group with nothing but declassified Top Secret
documents. All documents in the group are filed by control numbers. If a
document did not have a Top Secret control number, it would not have been able
to be filed in RG 341. Repeat, every document in RG 341 is a Top Secret document
that has been declassified and has a control number, the entire record group.

This was a truly incredible proclamation and is totally false. One might be
forgiven for thinking Ed was claiming to have reviewed all of RG 341. Record
Group 341 has 9787 cubic feet of material (about 1000 4-drawer filling
cabinets). I have, since 1985, had a 56-page Preliminary Inventory of the
Records for RG 341 which lists various entries and how many feet of files are in
each and how much of the total is TS: typically only a few percent. For example
"Unclassified through Secret, Incoming and Outgoing messages 1946-Dec. 1957,”
1743 ft. Entry 21 of RG 341. “Top Secret Incoming and Outgoing Messages, Oct.
1947-Jan, 1958,” 51ft. Entry 23 of RG 341. In other words there were only 3% (51
of 1743) as many TS messages as those through SECRET. Furthermore many of the
documents are still classified. I pointed this out on the UFO Updates Internet
interest group. Ed’s response after a few days of silence was

My apologies to
Stanton Friedman. On attempting to verify the statements I made with the source
of the information, it became apparent that much that I had posted related to RG
341 was misleading to false. I asked for clarification, which was promised, but
after four days was undelivered. I felt a reply to Friedman’s last message
needed to be time-sensitive to be of any value. Thus my apology to Stanton
Friedman and readers of this mailing list for having posted the first paragraph
of my last message which is not supported by facts. Unfortunately, I will not
be available for further discussion on the UFO subject. I have decided there
isn’t anyone in this field that I really care to associate with any longer
regardless of what their opinions are.

Like the kid who takes his marbles and
goes home.

Jan Aldrich who, like Ed, is quite knowledgeable about army classification
procedures, later picked up the same argument even after I pointed out that I
had been told by the Archivist Larry Bland at the General George Marshall
holdings in Virginia, that if they had to use TS control numbers in Marshall’s
day, on all TS documents, we would still be fighting WW 2. I noted that an
archivist at the Ike Library said that often the White House didn’t use TS
Control numbers. I had published two TS documents without control numbers in
Ref. 2 in 1990. One would think they were relevant since they came from Robert
Cutler and wound up in General Nathan Twining’s papers at the Library of
Congress Manuscript Division. Jan said it would only count if the originals at
the Ike Library had no TS Control numbers. Dr. Herbert Pankratz at the Ike
Library graciously supplied me with a Xerox copy of the one memo he found (It
indeed had no TS control number) and noted in writing on January 9, 2003, “We
have numerous documents classified as 'TOP SECRET' which do not have control
numbers on them.” I should stress that, of course, many TS documents do have TS
control numbers — especially when there are multiple copies of a many-page
document. The EBD says “Copy One of One.”

TOP SECRET RESTRICTED

any including the US government have made a big thing about the typed security
marking on the brief CTM: TOP SECRET RESTRICTED over a line saying SECURITY
INFORMATION. The point is that supposedly this was never used and doesn’t make
sense because TOP SECRET is the highest category and RESTRICTED is the lowest.
The Archives in their first version (May 9, 1988) of a commentary about the CTM
stated “The Acting Director of the FOI office of the NSC informed us that
TSR is a marking which did not come into use at the NSC until the Nixon
Administration [1969]. The Eisenhower Presidential Library also confirms that
this particular marking was not used during the Eisenhower Administration.” They
later corrected several false claims in response to data provided by me. I must
admit that although I had found Confidential Restricted and Secret Restricted, I
had not found TOP SECRET RESTRICTED. Does that mean it wasn’t used? NO, since we
have seen only a small amount of TS material. It should be noted that often
highly classified information from one administration was carried over to the
next at the White House rather than being sent to the appropriate presidential
Library. The Ike Library had a number of documents from the Truman era that were
not at the Truman Library.

The uncertainty was removed when the General Accounting Office in its pursuit in
many archives for Roswell-related material made the following statement on page
80 of their 400-plus-page report on their Roswell Investigation:

Dec. 7, 1994, Ms.
LJ and I reviewed records pertaining to the Air Force’s atomic energy and
certain mission and weapons requirements. These files were classified up to and
including Top Secret. The period covered by these records was from
1948-1956. There was no mention of the Roswell Incident. No information
pertaining to the assignment was obtained. In several instances we noticed the
classification Top Secret Restricted used on several documents. This is
mentioned because in past references to this classification (Majestic 12) we
were told that it was not used during this period.” [Italics added]

I tried to
obtain copies of the materials they had seen. I was told that the materials were
still classified. Clearly absence of evidence was NOT evidence for absence. An
obvious question is why would a clever forger use a security marking that was so
uncommon rather than just a plain vanilla TOP SECRET? How did he know to place a
slant red pencil mark through the marking? I was informed that this was standard
practice prior to declassification. An obscure detail indeed.